Setting up Facebook for BlackBerry

Do you have the need to poke your friends? Feel like sharing the ins and outs of your day? Want to read about your friends' farms and mafia? Then Facebook is the application for you. As one of the most popular social networking sites today, and a BlackBerry Super App, Facebook is compatible with BlackBerry devices running OS4.5+. Setting up the application is quick and painless and you can create an account in a matter of minutes.

After the phone reboots, click on the Facebook icon located in your download folder or on your home screen. You will need to accept the Facebook End User License Agreement or EULA which will take you to the login screen. Existing members can enter their email address and password while new users will need to create a Facebook account to proceed.

Creating an account on your device

Click on Sign Up located on the bottom right of the application. As you cannot create an account from within the application itself you will be redirected to your browser to begin the process.

You will be presented with the option of registering an account using your cell number or your e-mail address.

If you are registering using your phone number you must select your Country and click Submit. On the next screen, you will be asked to provide your first and last name, phone number (including carrier), password, date of birth, and gender.

If you are registering using your email, click on the corresponding link. You will be asked to provide the same information as before and your email address.

To complete registration, click on Sign Up. You can now close out of your browser, return to the application, and enter your login information.

Creating an account from your home computer

Go to www.facebook.com. On the main screen you will be asked to enter in your first and last name, your email, password, gender, and date of birth.

Click on sign up. You will be redirected to a security check page where you will be asked to enter two words separated by a space (see the example below).

Next, you will be asked to find friends, complete your profile Information, and upload a profile picture. You can skip each of these steps and go right to finalizing the process.

When complete, your account is set up and ready to use.

Simply go back to your device and enter in your login and password associated with your new account and you're done.

Setting up the application

As you will be logging in for the first time you will be asked to complete the setup wizard.

You will be asked to link your Facebook account with your BB message application (to receive notifications in your messages box), your BB calendar (to add event invitations to your calendar), and your BlackBerry contacts (to sync profile pictures and contact information). Don't worry about what to choose right away, you can always return to this screen from the options menu to modify.

When you have made your choice click Next.

Finally you will be asked how often Facebook should check for new feeds and how many to display at a time.

You have the choice of never, every 30 minutes, every 1 hour, every 2 hours, and every 3 hours. Having an application constantly check for feeds drains battery power. I recommend choosing the every 2 or every 3 hour option.

Click Save. You will be redirected to your main News Feed Page.

The second icon at the top will have a red asterisk. If you scroll and click on the notifications icon, you will have received two messages from Facebook: Getting Started and The Next Step. Both are filled with important shortcuts and helpful hints to using the application.

Shortcuts

F - See friend list

M - Send message

P - Poke

S - See status updates

U - Upload a picture

V - Send friend request

W- Write on a friend's wall

Congratulations! You now have access to all your friends news feeds,can receive and send messages, access wall posts and notifications, upload pictures to share, 'like' anything you want, and visit CrackBerry.com's Facebook page.

If you use GMail calendar, this app WILL (insert explinitive) mess your GMail calendar up royally. The FB takes control of the calendar (even though default is set to gmail) and duplicates or more your appointments. Then when you think you've fixed it, it erases them.

Once I finally scrapped this app my calendar has been more or less perfect.

Ok I use two Gmail calendar syncs on my 9700 os6 with the latest facebook version and I've had no problems. You must be doing it wrong. I find that gmail calendar syncs are every hour or so so maybe you just need to wait and see if it works instead of doing a whole bunch of things and getting no results because it hasn't synced yet.

Definitely doesn't apply to everyone. My Gmail is my default messaging and calendar choice on my BB. I use Google Sync instead of BIS to sync contacts and calendar because I need to sync several Google calendars with my BB. I also have FB and the FB calendar just sits there unused and has nothing on it but FB friend birthdays.

I have no problems even after a wipe and OS install as long as I make certain the Gmail account is always the default CICAL service - that can sometimes get changed after FB or OS install.

I tried many times over to get this option working while at home. I did research and figured out my failures. This will not work the first time unless you are in the 3g network via vzw service. I hope I have saved someone else time to figure this out as well.

I also think its worth noting that tagging people in pictures or searching for their contact information, phone number, profile, to message them, etc, is a LOT faster in version 1.9.0.20. I know that's been a personal concern and one my friends have expressed.

Two questions: (1) does it require a BIS or BES like other versions (2) Is there a way to download it IMMEDIATELY without going through seemingly 12 different pages at which time it ends up insisting you download it through App World.

It does require you to have a BlackBerry internet plan (BES/BIS) to work. If you have BES it depends on your IT's policy. Some companies have restrictions others like mine, let you have it. I found a quicker way for you. Go to Facebook's mobile page (m.facebook.com) from your phone and login. At the bottom it should have a link to Download Facebook for your "device name". If you click on that link it should take you right to BlackBerry's download page. Hope that helps.

Worth noting that the BB Facebook client will remove messages from the web (provided that you have enabled message sync in the app) without much notice. If you delete them from your BB and you have message sync setup on the BB then they'll be removed from Facebook as well.

I think it's a flaw to not present an "are you sure" or an option to leave on web and only delete messages from the device.

I know! I hate that! Had some important messages that I didn't want erased! But didn't know until it was too late! Is there any setting that will correct this from happening? Or we just have to wait and see if they will provide a "fix" for it??

I downloaded the latest upgrade for facebook but after my phone rebooted I can't find the icon to open it I've looked in apps downloads and its not there. I have uninstalled and rebooted and still can't find it. It shows that its downloaded just can't find the icon to open it. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Has anyone else experienced this problem? Can I redownload the previous version that worked,and if so where can I find the previous version to redownload?

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